Recordantes Et Nihil Sentiens

"Everyday, we meet people on the worst day of their lives." - Gil Grissom, CSI Las Vegas

So here comes another realization from the night before. It may take me forever to realize things, it may even cost me a lot of wake up calls before I get into some realizations but I couldn’t care less. For as long as I know that I’m still sane and I am keeping my head above the water, I’ll be okay – if not for long, at least for a certain period of time.

For the past days, I have found refuge in walking. It has become an escape of some sorts. I usually take the longest route home, now. And for some unknown reason, it feels good. Well, after all, there’s really nothing to expect when I get home except for a cold room with a cold bed. For the past days, I am feeling the urge to detach myself from the world. I mean, it’s nothing really personal, but I just have to take a day off. I have to keep track of where my mind is going. For the past days, I have been realizing that walking gives me the time to enjoy what I am left with. For unknown reasons, walking long, busy roads give me the sense of motivation to keep walking. I may not see something great about people’s eyes everyday but at least I know that some of them may be as empty as I am. They may be alive, but who knows if they’re dead inside – like me.

I don’t really want to sound overly emotional most of the time. Truth of the matter is, this is not my emotional side talking. This is my side that doesn’t care about anything. I have been so used to being too emotional that at some point in the way, I stopped feeling things I’m supposed to feel. There is a hollow spot inside me, something like the feeling you get when you have just eaten a whole load of food but still feel hungry. Well, something like that happens inside me almost every day. I feel like a zombie. It feels good sometimes – not being able to understand why you’re feeling nothing, why you’re feeling empty. It’s amazing when I look back at my life before this and how I find the questions I can’t answer up to now. So, on my way home, a thought struck me. It was the kind of thought that left me wondering all night long. It’s not really something serious but I just have to ask myself the same questions my friends ask me on an occasional basis: Why do I hang on? Why do I keep my hands tied? Why won’t I get the fact that I am tortured emotionally? And the answer came, “I don’t know”.

I don’t really know why I always hang on to people who torture me emotionally. I guess that’s how attention-seeking I am. I guess that’s how desperate I am. I grew up without getting much attention, you see. I have two brothers that are better than me and they always get the attention at everything. The only attention I got – for as long as I can remember – was when I started college, when I went to a prestigious University ad that was about it. I hang on to people who torture me emotionally because maybe, they’re still the people I want to be with. Because maybe, they are the people I want attention from. They give me the attention I want when no one else would dare look at me, when no one else notices my existence. As shallow as it may be, I hang on to this kind of people for the simple reason that even though all they do is torture me, they know I exist. I don’t know, maybe that’s just how it goes for me. That’s what I’m supposed to deal with until I can finally let go. I really don’t know cos I don’t care. I just feel nothing and yes, it contributes to the hollow feeling, but it’s fine. I mean, it’s totally OK.

PS. I really wanted to quote a message I sent a friend a year and a week ago about something remotely close to this, "Idk if my actions speak of what I have in mind but I have been growing tired. Yet I want to hang in there... It's the only place that I feel secure." Guess nothing's really changed in the past year.

When will I see you again?

This may not come as much of a surprise. But, I pretty much wish that he remembers everything… I pretty much wish that you could take away all the hurt I don’t want to speak about, Mr. Mill. I’m better off keeping everything to myself nowadays, but I still need you to listen to me. I want you to remember and I want him to remember too. You are two of the people I want in my life no matter what. That may be conflicting, yes, but I don’t really care. Please remember me once more.

Vis Amari

Dear Mr. Mill,

Last night, I was about to post a hate blog. That's the least I want, you know.  I don't want to stress you on things like that. It was something stupid. I am too angry to even write well. For the sake of no argument, I admit that I am wrong in letting other people treat me the way they want to. I am wrong in being the all-understanding sonuvabitch that rants everytime I get hurt. Right now, I don't want to talk. I just want myself to listen to one song, this:

"Without passion, my words are nothing." - Sine Passione, Non Verba Mea

..and now, I don’t have to deal with the feeling that I am slow at making progress because I am trained for quality. 

Quality and accuracy is what I know, not quantity. It doesn’t really matter how many words register to the log because it doesn’t change the world

. I’d rather have a 400-word life-changing output under my name. Without passion, my words are nothing. 

On feeling nothing - Nihil In Studiis

Dear Mr. Mill,

At one point in your life, you will see yourself in a situation where all the things you have fought so hard are going nowhere. I don’t know where the realization is coming but you definitely realize that there is indeed something wrong with you. You feel nothing one day – totally detaching yourself from all the emotion that humans have, totally having your own set of understanding about everything that happens and you cared less. The beauty of being in this kind of situation is the nothingness that you feel. You may even force yourself to feel – just to show that you’re damn interested. But you can’t. You feel nothing. You are nothing.

Then another situation comes. The most unexpected of situations. The one that requires you not to feel but you feel anyways. It’s a bitch as that. You are caught feeling everything when you are supposed to be feeling empty. Don’t get me wrong. Most of the time, I desire to be a normal human being. I desire to feel everything that people are supposed to feel in specific situations, but when that time comes, I just can’t. Most of the time, I just feel like a robot. I fake emotions just so people would not know the difference. I pretend to be happy with what they are doing for me, eventhough I don’t feel anything inside. After a long and tiring day, a friend makes an effort to make me smile but I smile just for the sake of smiling, not because I am happy. I pretend to feel things, I try to feel things just to understand what I needed to understand in certain situations – but I can’t. It normally happens in the most unexpected time. In my most vulnerable time – when I am alone.

I can’t really say that I need you to fill me with all the emotion stuff, Mr. Mill. You know me, I am the trying-hard philosophy fan. You are the expert in all I need to know. You know what to say when I need to hear it. You are the philosopher that I need to explain to me everything it is I need to understand about the world. Why this and that happens? How come this and that happen? I really don’t know. I just want you to know how I’m feeling and tell me why I am feeling this. I feel empty. Emptier than the first time you ever saw me.

On Being Used - In Sit Amet

I feel like I have thrown four years of what I learned in college away. I am a journalist by profession. I should be out there conquering the world with my words, I should be out there telling people what they needed to know, I should be out there delivering all the necessary information the public should know – but instead, I am stuck in a world where I am constantly neglecting all the things I have sworn to do. I am no pen-pusher. I am but an accessory to some shallow system. I swore to write for my myself, for passion, for justice, for equality. But what am I writing about now? God-forsaken products that no one really bothers to buy? Things that don’t really matter? I constantly lie about what I write just for the sake of fulfilling the duty I signed up for when I got hired by the company? I studied journalism for a reason. I didn’t just got out there, wasted my life on everything we have to go through, only to throw it all away. Just like that.

I yearn to make my voice heard. I yearn to make a change. I yearn to take a stand. I’m yearning for nothing now. This is a breaking point. This is not a stand. Making a stand means leaving this crappy job behind, finding the open window and trying my best to recreate my life there. The funny thing is, I was listening to Fireworks on my way home and I almost cried hearing this lyrics, “Maybe a reason why all the doors are closed so you could open one that leads you to the perfect road.” I will never grow tired of looking for that perfect road.

Being used at work

I spend majority of my life writing about non-sense things. I spend every day with an empty heart and an empty soul. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t really enjoy what you are doing. Yes, it can be fun sometimes. All those people who share the same frustrations as you have has become the reason why I hold on. I am not alone on that aspect, you see. These people are as frustrated as I am. They have their dreams and they are big. Yet they are confined to this macrocosm, trying their best to survive each day, trying their best not to lose themselves. But how can you not lose sense? How can you not feel used when you know that the people who are paying you are not giving the due amount of recognition and compensation that you deserve? I always go to work. No matter how hard I try to justify their actions towards people working under them, I just can’t. I always do everything they ask me to do. I write all those crappy articles, those pointless topics, the dumb instructions of the clients and what do I get? Compensation less than what a construction worker gets in one day of work. Maybe it’s wrong to compare it to them because I have always believed that they all deserve more than the pay they are getting after working their ass off for people who don’t even recognize what they do. They are mere puppets. They are mere robots who should follow what is told or else they’ll suffer the worst fate of them all. I am a mere puppet. The worst part of being in this system is the fact that they don’t even recognize the efforts I have exerted just because I haven’t met their desired number of finished articles in a day. I feel used. I feel being robbed of the chance to grow because of what they are doing to me. I know, I should quit. But I can’t for the single reason that my pride can’t feed me, my pride can’t pay for my rent, my pride will not bring me anywhere. It will just pull me down. It will just feed from my continuing failure and I pity myself so much.

Being used by people you care about

They say that when you decide to help the people you care for, the people you love, you should not expect anything in return. As I may have been doing that, I can’t help but wonder why most of the time, I am the one giving everything. They will be good to me, they will start treating me right when they need something from me. When they finally got what they want, we are back to being those cold people again. I may be wrong in expecting as I may be wrong in assuming that I am used but for years now, that has been the pattern. Nothing has really changed. One favor day is equal to one great day. One normal day is equal to nothing. If it has escaped you, I have feelings. I may be on the verge of losing it with my soul, but I know what you are doing. I know where this is going and I am afraid that the day would come, when I can’t even give anything, I will be left alone. I would be lonelier than I am today, than the past years. In all honesty, I think I can recount those moments that I am truly happy. I think I can enumerate all those times I was genuinely pleased about everything that’s happening around me and in all honesty, it all happened in the first few months of the 2-year love affair. It is as serious as that. I am not making things up, I am merely stating the facts.

I have never really cared for myself that much in the past years. I have prioritized the needs of other people that I am left with nothing. While walking back home today, I realized what I did to myself. Caring so much for other people made me lonely. And I pretty much remember the last time I ever thought of giving something for myself. I know I shouldn’t be stressing much about selfish rants, but I have to have something for myself. I don’t have a family to feed but I can’t even buy anything for myself to make me happy. I cut on my eating allowance just so I could last with the money I have for another week. The moment I get my monthly compensation, they’re there. Asking me for money. Asking me for the fruits of my month-long stress battle with a job I don’t even like anymore. It’s totally fine with me if they need it badly, I just don’t want them making me feel useless when they don’t even need anything for me. I am not a provider of all your needs. I have my needs, too. And I have my life to live. You can even consider it a blessing that I never ask anything in return, that I never leave their side. That I am just there waiting to be recognized as me, not because of what I can give.

"So don't let them take your life for granted. You're the only one who needs to rule your world. When life leaves you feeling empty-handed, light it up and show 'em what you're worth."

- Firework, Boyce Avenue

How to live life to the fullest

Living just for the sake of living is one thing; living life for the fullness of it is another. The famous quotation from Forrest Gump says, “Life is a box of chocolate, you’ll never know what you’ll get” is true. Unless you go out of your shell and explore the world, there is nothing to see.

Going out of your comfort zone can reap you results you never think is there. It’s like eating something you have never tasted but in the end, you will find out that it is actually worth the try. Life goes that way. As you power on through it, you will realize that there are a lot of things in store for you. There are literally millions to see. There are literally millions to explore. So, if you are wondering how to live life to its fullest extent, there are a many ways to do that:

1. 1.      Be adventurous. Embarking on an adventure is not just simply exploring the world; it is also synonymous to going out of your way to do things. Go to a place you’ve never been before. Learn new things from that place, from the people, from the culture. It is not necessary to go to an expensive backpacking around the world, going to the places you have never given much attention would do. How to live life is not about the money you will be spending, but the experience you will get out of it.

1. 2.      Seize the day/Carpe Diem. This famous quotation says it all. Why would you spend so much time worrying about the inevitable when you can enjoy every moment as it is? Be carefree. Be unstoppable.

1. 3.      Keep a journal. Recording what happens in your daily life gives you the chance to go over it as much as you want. How to live life to the fullest is not just about the present experiences, it also means the past and the lessons you learned out of it to be the person you are today.